


Comfort

by LeoOtherLands



Category: Naruto
Genre: Blood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Kindness, M/M, Mission injuries, Panic Attacks, Post-Mission, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:33:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24192172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: Kakashi returns from one mission to find a new-made chunin sitting in a pool of his own blood. He didn't expect the one he cared for to care for him, in turn, after he comes back from another mission, shaken and needing comfort.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 29
Kudos: 115
Collections: Quarantine Creations 2020 Event





	1. To Comfort Another

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kakashiforever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kakashiforever/gifts).



> This one is for the sweetest Kakashiforever. Happy birthday, so very late! I hope this little thing makes your night, somehow. It might be ten days behind schedule, but how could I not present a birthday gift to the one who is always there, reminding me to drink water and eat some gods forsaken protein! You are amazing and I love you. Enjoy! Per request, you have one chapter of smut, and a second chapter of hurt comfort you didn't ask for, written with the prompt "Character A comforts character B by talking to them gently," for the Quarantine Creations Event.

Weariness lagged my limbs, weighing them down, as we leapt in tandem from rooftop to rooftop. _Konoha_ was below our feet, and, internally, looking out the eyeholes of my ANBU mask, I was glad for that. Being part of the ANBU Black Ops was not easy. We’d been out of the village for three months, doing things only the _Hokage_ , the head of the Village Hidden by Leaves, was ever likely to know about, and I was just tried to my core.

Beside me, Tenzō moved with a sluggishness to his motions I was sure meant he was as tired as I was. Anywhere but in the walls of the village, we both would have thrown off our weariness and kept moving on with determination and stealthy grace. But we were home and there was no more need to pretend or push. Another few hours to report and we could both collapse into our respected beds.

Leap and land, ledge to ledge, don’t stop, don’t think, just get to the _Hokage_ Tower and debrief. It was a predictable routine, one I’d followed more times than I could remember and I was doggedly focused on it. But there was one scent every _nin_ knew, one that could distract the best of us when it flooded out noses. Sharp. Metallic. Biting. Blood was a thing no ANBU wanted to taste on the breeze.

It was faint but I’d always had a good nose and the tickle of that unwelcome smell pulled me up short. Tenzō drew up alongside me, his Lynx mask flashing white and red in the dark, the sound of his breathing heavy behind it. The younger man didn’t question me, though. He just tilted his head, angling his masked face inquiringly.

I glanced at him, knowing my Hound mask did nothing to convey what I was thinking and knowing, also, my _kohai_ would not be able to detect the faint traces of stinging injury on the breeze brought to my senses. “Go, report,” I told him, a thing not suggestion and also not an order. He knew me well, he didn’t need me to say what had stopped me or that I would do the same as I instructed him to do, shortly. Tenzō just kept his head angled thoughtfully a moment, then he moved and was gone. I turned the opposite way and aimed for the source of that blood scent.

It was an apartment stuck off on the corner of a building. A window stood open, curtains fluttering, emitting that uncomfortable, warm smell. I hesitated in a tree a short while, unsure if I _should_ pass that aperture. I hadn’t been invited and there was nothing like an ANBU, with our blank, masked faces and unscrupulous eyes, to make someone feel afraid. Going in could do more harm than good.

But that stinging blood smell was compelling and I crossed from tree to window frame and then slid into a space I wasn’t welcomed in, but was also not barred from. No wards kept me out. No angry _chakra_ assaulted me. What I found was a darkened bedroom with a mussed bed and a door standing open, leading to a diffusely-lit hallway. A weak, pulsating _chakra_ signature flickered against my consciousness from out there, accompanied by the sharpening smell of blood, and I followed both. Movements slow, so as not to startle whatever was out there.

What I found was beyond being startled, though. He was maybe a few years younger than me, sixteen or seventeen at most, and possibly not even that. A slender _nin_ crumpled against his door, sitting in a pool of spreading blood. A sluggish tide that was a bright contrast to the trembling whiteness of his hand pressed to the floor in that pool, fingers splayed, creating wedges of red outlined in white. His hair was brown and messy, falling out of the remains of a ponytail and there was a vivid scar across his nose, a sign this wasn’t the first time he’d been hurt. But his dazed, brown eyes gazing up at mine made him look like an injured deer, begging for help. And not the least surprised or concerned I was there, like a ghost in his personal place.

“What happened?” I asked, going slowly to him and crouching down, to keep from frightening him and to see if he would let me.

He was shell shocked. I’d seen enough _nin_ coming back from missions to know what it looked like, but, hanging off some edge he hadn’t seen coming or not, he still answered. Automatically, thoughtlessly, unconcernedly. “Mission. First _chunin_ mission.”

I nodded, even as I internally said _shit_. His left side was red, the flak jacket and pants he wore torn and saturated with the ruby substance that dripped and trickled into the puddle he sat in. Whatever his mission was, it had to have gone bad. Extremely bad. Someone had to have been hurt worse than this or died for this one to have been overlooked enough to sneak off to his apartment unattended.

Though it was an obviously stupid thing to do, I did not blame him for avoiding the medics. I’d done it often enough to reprimand him would be hypocrisy. “We need to get you looked after,” was all I said, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder, to see how that would be with him.

He didn’t brush it off or explode into motion at my touch. Just let his head droop forward and panted out, “Not… the Hospital.”

“Okay,” I acquiesced, easily. He couldn’t have been hurt too badly, life-threateningly, and made it back to his home. He likely had to have been holding back his own blood with _chakra_ , so as not to alert his teammates to his wounds, until the moment he’d stepped in his door, and that required energy. I could care for him. Or determine otherwise, if I found I estimated my abilities wrong. “Where’s your bathroom?”

He raised a trembling arm and pointed further down the hall, mute and listless.

“Okay,” I said, moving lightning-fast and putting myself under the arm he’d raised, to drape it over my shoulders, even as I wrapped an arm around his waist. It was a touchy thing to do, but he was a _chunin_ , a new _chunin_ at that, not a _jounin_ , and I thought I could easily suppress one injured _chunin_ if he decided to trigger and attack me. You never knew with _nin_ coming off a mission. Instincts and bloodlust ran high. Even friends could prove viscous at times like this. Animal like. Creatures that’d been taught how to use teeth and claws, but not how to put them away when they were done.

The other _nin_ didn’t stiffen or try to resist or struggle, though. He let me lift him, his weight like nothing, like a husk run dry, and start shuffling him toward where he’d pointed. He did murmur indistinct things out of lips that were too pale for my liking, but I couldn’t tell what he said and didn’t try.

I got him into his shower and let him sink, splay-legged, to the bottom of his tub. A quick look was enough to show we’d left a blood trail behind us and my flak jacket was wet with the stuff where I’d pressed him to me. That was somewhat annoying, but I had experience getting blood stains out. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t before.

Grunting, I took off the heavy jacket and my arm guards, and dropped them into a corner, before crouching down by him again. My fingers went to the fastenings on his own jacket. “We’re going to have to get this off you.”

His fingers went up to mine, but he didn’t push me away. Shaking or not, he helped, and between the two of us, we soon had him out of his armor, his _shinobi_ blues, and his underthings. And all I could do was look at this beautiful, bronze body sprawled unashamedly naked in front of me. It was _not_ the time to be thinking of that, but I’d just come off a mission, too, and that did weird things to a man.

Shaking my head, I focused in on the reason he was naked. A meandering gash ran down his left side, over his hip, and across his upper leg. Not deep, thankfully, but long. “We need to seal this.”

“Medical kit,” he breathed.

“What?”

“Medical kit.” This time he fluttered a hand at where I’d deposited his clothes, and I retrieved the pouch he meant.

I was used to stitching people on low supplies, I’d field dressed teammates enough to know how to stretch what was available, but what worried me was sterilizing the wound. I didn’t have any medical talent where _ninjutsu_ was concerned, and possible infection was an issue. But when I looked up from sorting our combined supplies, I found he was taking care of it himself. His hands were glowing green, and skimming over the red seam in his skin. His whole frame was trembling, his legs shaking, and chest heaving with the effort of it, but he met my eyes and panted, “I can… I can do it.”

I let him. I let him clean the wound with _chakra_ , then I knocked his hands away. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

He complied, blessedly, simply laying there against the wall, while I sutured the deepest parts of the gash. Methodical. Bland. Not even thinking about the fact he might be in pain, _worse_ pain, thanks to what I was doing, until he moaned. His eyes were closed and he was twitching, but not complaining.

Still, rumbling something low in my throat, I dipped into the medical kit and came up with a pain med. “Here,” I said, bring it up.

He swatted it aside, rolling his head back and forth on the wall. “No.”

I could have protested this, but tossed the med aside, backhanded, instead and went back to my work. If he didn’t want it, I couldn’t fault him. I wasn’t one to take pills, either.

A little more, and I had most of him sutured and the rest of him bandaged. Then, I moved on to cleaning him up, as best I could, without turning the water on him. I didn’t want to do that. The shower was mostly to keep us from making a bigger mess in his living space. Damp rags swiped along his skin would have to do. They smeared, as much as they cleaned, but got the worst of the gore off.

Done, I wadded the rags up and tossed them in a corner of his shower. Ruined, but who cared. Nothing for it now.

“Come on,” I said, laying his arm back over my shoulders and urging him up. “We should get you to bed, as long as you don’t mind ruining your sheets.”

“Don’t care. I have more.” The words were short, but the tone was as much an attempt at humor as we could get, at a time like this. There and let go, just as quickly. Neither of us felt very much in the mood for amusement.

I piloted him into his room and did my best to dump him onto his bed without hurting him further, but that was easier said than done, and somehow we both ended up on the bed. Him on all fours, panting like a dog, open-mouthed, and me behind him. Staring at a toned back and a shapely butt.

He had a nice backside and I really shouldn’t have been admiring that. I needed to get away.

“You should rest,” I said. “Sleep, and get yourself looked after come morning.”

“Don’t go.”

The words surprised me, but not as much as his fast action. Suddenly, that shapely ass was shoved back into me, into my _crotch_ , and there was no way to hide what was happening there. No way to explain away that inconvenient bulge I’d been hoping to escape with and take care of, in some tree, while I thought about all that bronze skin of his, sprawled naked in his shower, sans ripped-up side. I really didn’t want to think about that.

But there was a fine backside grinding against my little problem and its owner was trembling and biting his lip, while he hung his head down between his arms. A pant and, “You can stay.”

It was pretty clear what he meant, basically unmistakable. There were people who didn’t understand how coming off a battle, coming down from trading death, covered in blood, could be arousing, but all those people had never been on a field. They didn’t get how it could do things to a man’s head. Push certain requirements to the fore and everything else off to the side. Though he was whining under me, hiding his face in his arm in shame, I couldn’t fault him for this, either. Couldn’t blame him for the wonton display he was putting on. How many times had I gone to the bars, after an especially bad mission, and done the same thing?

“It’s okay,” I said the words, putting a hand on his back. Trying to reassure.

He didn’t say anything, but at the touch, he whimpered out a new sound, a desperate one, hard to misinterpret. I looked down at him, and changed the positions of my hands, putting them on his hips, mindful one was still injured. Rumbling in my throat again, I let my palms cup him, taking in his warmth, before sliding them down over his thighs, spreading them open more, putting him off balance. “Is this what you want?” I asked the question, fingers lingering over hot skin, thumbs caressing.

He made a sound like a gasp, then let out, “Yes!” as if realizing he needed to express this explicit consent to get what he wanted.

One of my hands went up his abdomen, to support him better, and I put my masked face against his back, hoping that would express comfort. “You won’t regret it tomorrow?”

He whined something under me, something torn and needy, and, “No!” a pleading affirmation.

“Alright.”

I didn’t ask any more questions. The hand not splayed on his chest went the last millimeters to find and handle him. He was hard and wet, the part of him I held already leaking in its eagerness for attention. And I gave it to him. Masked face laid along his spine, I worked him, until he was gasping and sweating and pleading unintelligible things. Until his need spilled hot over my fingers and the whole of him seemed to tighten. Back stiffening and shaking shoulders tensing.

The new-made _chunin_ cried out with it all, but his taunt stance lasted only a moment and he was moaning, going limp in my hands. I lowered him to his sheets, surely ruined now, and smoothed my dry hand over his back in easy circles. “It’s okay.”

“More.” He was turning his face this way and that on the bedding, trying to hide his over-wrought tears, to wipe away his shame at begging, face half crumbled with grief and whatever else he was feeling. “Please.”

I didn’t answer. Just nudged my Hound mask back between his shoulder blades and readjusted my position, so I straddled him. Letting him feel my own, still-unsated need swelling behind fabric. A thing I didn’t concern myself with, yet. Using fingers still smeared with his arousal and release, I fingered his entrance and concentrated on prepping him relentlessly but thoroughly.

He twitched and squirmed soundlessly beneath me, clenching around my digits. Together we were silent, preforming an ago-old ritual, joining in a rite as ancient and basically human as the need for water. When he was ready, I reseated myself again, braced over him, my length freed, at last, and laying along the clef of his ass.

I let him absorb that a moment, let him think about it, then began moving, sliding myself up and down in that clef. Giving him the sensation of it, and allowing him all the time there was to protest. To say no.

But I didn’t ask him again if he wanted it. If he had refused, I would have stopped, but he didn’t, so neither did I. A few minutes more of this and I aligned myself and pushed into him. He made no sound, not even when I bottomed myself out in him, and maybe he should have. He was tight. Oh, so tight in a way that said he had likely never done this particular thing before. The stretch had to sting, and despite my prep, there had to be discomfort. Had to be pain with the motion of me pulling out and pushing back in, setting my own pace and seeking my own needs, without thought of much else. There might even have been blood later, when we both could think, but I remembered what it was I felt when I went looking for frantic relief with another in the bars in the lowest parts of _Konoha_. Not kind caresses and sweet epitaphs, rather, pulsing, heating desire to be used, consumed by another, to have everything plaguing me washed out, pounded away into forgetfulness and hot rush of arousal and dry sting. There were those who didn’t understand that any more than they understood how blood and death and terror could put a man’s blood up and push him to sex. But the truth was, comfort wasn’t always soft, wasn’t always about gentleness. Sometimes, it was rough, sometimes it was harsh, and sometimes that was okay.

After everything, as tired as I was, it didn’t take much for me to hit my peak. Grunting, eyes widening, I filled him and pitched forward. He keened a little under me, and I snaked a hand down below him to find his own hardening piece and stroke him to final climax for the second time in the night.

Then, spent, I just went still, spread across his back, full-body compressing him into the bed, letting him take the warm feel of that, as long as he wanted it. Letting him be the first to move. He squirmed, shifting around, so he could coil around me, and I let him do that too. Hooked my own arms around him and rested my sweat-slick face behind porcelain in the hollow of his neck and breathed with him.

“Was that okay?” the only thing that passed out of my lips after several moments where we held each other and he carted his fingers through my hair.

“Yes,” was his only return. It wasn’t until I moved to disentangle myself from him he spoke again. “You can come back sometime.”

I glanced at him, surprised by this unexpected offer. But I didn’t acknowledge it. Just tucked it away for later and said, “Get yourself looked after in the morning, alright?”

“Alright,” he assented, but it was a drowsy thing, half mumbled. With a soft, almost-hum he turned over onto his side and curled up, fisting his hands beneath his chin.

Asleep before he fully found his comfortable position.

I looked at him sleeping there for a short while, then made sure he was covered, retrieved my armor from his bathroom, and made my exit out his window, in search of Tenzō, a report, and my own bed.


	2. To Be Comforted By Another

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "walks in, sets chapter down" Well! This took far longer to finish than I ever intended it to. I'm sorry for that. But hey, it is done now and I'm here with a few notes! First I wanted to say how sorry I am I've been spotty with updates in general. I launched my second book last month on the 20 and that sapped a lot of creative energy. It's been hard to get back in a good flow. Plus, COVID has been doing a number on my mental health. All around, I could have been better these last weeks/months. But I am still living and almost done with an, ummm, piece of work in another fandom I never intended to write at all. But it's there, people are liking it, and I suppose I'll finish it. Once I do, I am going to toss myself fully back into Naruto fandom and finish up some of the works in progress I've been leaving laying around here. "turns over a few half-finished fics" Yeah, I need to take care of these. First on the list: Motivator. So! I hope you enjoy, I'm alive, and I'll be back soon with more updates on other fics! Until then, stay safe and don't bite the other humans, they're germier than normal...
> 
> Oh! And my dear Kakashiforever, I love you so very much. I hope you know that and this continuation of your extraordinarily late birthday gift is worth the wait. Enjoy dearest.

_Tenzō was going to be alright. Tenzō_ was _going to be alright._

I was assured of the fact over and over again by harried and vaguely harassed medics in the secure wing of the _Konoha_ Hospital before I believed it enough to allow them to shove me out the door, baring a few stitches in my own arm.

Believed it…

Swaying on my feet, dazed and dizzy and attempting to remember which direction my house was in, I faintly knew I didn’t so much _believe_ it as had no choice but to accept it. Arguing with _Iryō-nin_ , who had no mind for you to be there, never led to anything good. Medics. They’d smile at you, then you’d wake up on your ass, wondering how you got there. They might seem placid and calm, even sweet, but never piss them off. Antagonizing anyone who knew that much about the human anatomy was about as stupid as poking a _Bakeneko_ …

I leapt and landed, or more so, sprawled in a tree, where I hung, just breathing. Dazed. Totally dazed. Mind automating me without conscience thought behind it. Only need. I wasn’t even aware of where my feet had been taking me until the sharp twist of a twig along my stitched arm brought me to a moment of searing, too-clear, sharp-edged, clarity, staring at a familiar window. At curtains fluttering in a light breeze. _This_ was not my house. This was _very much_ not my house. This was _his_ house. I hadn’t been back to the nameless _chunin’s_ home for nearly four months. Not since that other night, returning from a mission with Tenzō, dead tired but unharmed. I’d thought about it, though. More pointedly, I’d thought about that offer the half-addled, sex and stress worn boy had held out to me like a boon. Like water to the weary.

_You can come back sometime._

Only coming back was not a smart thing to do, for various reasons, all of them culminating in I was ANBU. Getting involved with any non-ANBU only put both parties at risk, but… The thought of that beautiful body and those stunned eyes looking at me, while their owner sat in a pool of blood… I couldn’t get that out of my head any more than I could that inexplicable offer. There’d been lots of times I’d nearly diverted to just look in on the new-made _chunin_ and find out if he’d at least gone to the medics in the morning, like I’d asked him to. Plenty of times… so many I’d got in the habit of stopping my traitor feet before I could misbehave. Despite myself, I’d done the smart thing, the sensible thing, over and over again, and stayed away. But now here I was. In a tree. Outside his window. Hurt and as shell-shocked as he’d been that other night. And he was in there, and I wanted to be in there too. Curled up in his arms and smelling his sweat on his skin, as I had when he panted under me.

A small voice told me I shouldn’t do what I was about to do, _was doing_ , but I couldn’t stop myself any more than I could remember how I got to the tree to begin with. More as if watching myself move in a dream, body numb and tingling, then as if I had control over my limbs, I left the tree and passed through that open window.

My feet could hardly sense the floor beneath them, as I tumbled ungracefully off the windowsill. Trying to right myself, I blinked and swayed, only to catch myself on a small side table when I stumbled. The other boy had been asleep, bare-chested and tangled up in his sheets, but he jerked and woke at the subtle noises I made. His shocked and fearful cry, like a wounded animal suddenly confronted by a predator, registered on my mind, like razor edges and I spun, hands grabbing the sill and muscles tensed to propel me back outside into the night where I belonged.

“Wait! Don’t go!”

The words were high and desperate and they made me throw a glance over my shoulder. The chestnut-haired _chunin_ was on his knees in the tumbled sheets, one hand reaching out for me pleadingly, the other wrapped around a ball of fabric, as if to hold himself back from flying after me.

It was the pleading, so plain in his body language, and the desire painted all over his face that broke me. He wanted me… to not go.

Dizzy, yet again, whirling mentally and unable to balance or focus, I released my hold on his window and turned in a clumsy circle, feet almost tangling together. But I was a _jounin_ , and even fucked up and in a state of near mental shutdown, my body could still react. It wanted in the _chunin’s_ arms, it wanted it _now_.

Without meaning to or thinking about it, about how my actions could be seen as dangerous, I launched myself at him. One moment swaying, rocking on numb feet, the next I was knocking him back unto his ass, wrapping my arms around his narrow waist, and burying my masked face in his thigh, where I inhaled deep breaths of his scent. Clean. Clean this time. Fresh clothes and washed skin. He must have showered before tossing himself into bed.

Above me, he gasped and his body went taunt for half a heartbeat, shocked by my sudden movement, making me stiffen and pause my fevered sniffing. But his reaction was only momentary. As if pleased by me, he relaxed, frame going loose and easy in my grasp. “You came back,” he said gently.

Slowly, hesitantly, as if not wanting to frighten me or not sure of how I would take it, he raised a hand and softly put it in my hair. He held it still there a moment, then began to run his fingers through the silver mess on my head. Soothing. Slow. And to match it, his voice drifted to me like a sweet scent on the breeze. Faint. Hardly there at first, but growing in potency and loveliness as it went on. Beginning no more than rich, dark tones melding above me, but as his careful fingers continued their work, what he was saying resolving into words with meaning behind them.

“When I first woke up, I was convinced it was a dream. That you were a dream. A hallucination brought on by… by how badly everything had gone. But I couldn’t pretend for long. There was my side and the mess.” I could almost feel him wince above me, but his hand never slowed in its even strokes. “Oh, Sage, the mess. I think there are still bloodstains out there in the hall I can’t get out.

“But… more than that… I could still smell you, us, on my sheets. So, I knew it was real. And I didn’t regret it. What we did. I kept thinking you’d come back, only you never came. I kept expecting you, but the months went by and you never showed your face.”

It wasn’t an accusatory statement. Just something low and soft and kind, accompanied by those rhythmic movements of his fingers through my hair. He was telling me a story and not blaming me for what I couldn’t help. And he didn’t break his cadence or flow, just went on with his ministrations.

His nimble digits pushed locks of my messy, silver hair off my forehead and behind my ears. A feat, considering he had to work the strands out from under my mask, where they had clung to my damp face. And all the while, he just went on talking gently to me.

“After… after I recovered, I was placed on another team and given another mission. I did it. _We_ did it. And then we did another and another, and I just felt so lost. I was fighting for _Konoha_ , for our village, but I didn’t feel _in place_. No matter what I did, it felt wrong. So, I made a choice. I talked to Daikoku Feneno, one of my instructors from the Academy, and made arrangements to have my status changed from active duty to reserve. Daikoku agreed to be my mentor in the Academy, and I’ve been learning how to train the pre- _genin_. It’s… nice. Better than missions ever were. I feel like I’m doing something _right_ for a change. Daikoku must think that too. He says I might have my own class in a few months. It’s frightening but exhilarating all at once.”

His voice was rising over the words, glowing as only those speaking of something they really love can make words glow. There was a smile in those words, and I tilted my head to see it, blinking up at the _chunin_ like an owl just waking to find it was still daylight. The boy’s face was glowing too. Warmth filled his liquid-earth eyes and his expression was all soft and glad and it was aimed at me.

Me.

He was happy in the telling of his tale, but also in the fact I was there. Clinging to him. In his lap. With his fingers in my hair…

Quite suddenly, I realized I was very calm. Tenzō had taken an explosive _jutsu_ full on and was torn up in the Tree Leaf Hospital, but he would be alright, and I was in this _chunin’s_ apartment, hanging on to him so tight I could feel the press of his hipbones digging into me. I must have been hurting him, bruising him, but he’d made no protest. Just been kind and talked me down like I was… was some green _genin_!

The realization of what I’d done slapped me like the sting of _senbon_ hitting skin. _What the hell was I doing?!_

I bolted upright and back away from him on the bed so quickly I would have thought it would unbalance the _chunin_ , knock him back into the bedding, but he held himself up with _shinobi_ grace and maybe simple will. He sat there, so relaxed, muscles loose and hands laying open in his lap, little, half smile, like a half-forgotten, purely thoughtless thing, pulling up his lips. His chocolate eyes were all soft and his voice reached me like a comforting hand in the dark that wouldn’t let go.

“I’m so glad you came back. I wanted to tell you all this for so long.”

The simplicity of those words left me blinking again, but they also shoved my resolve off to the side. It was an unwanted thing to begin with and I was being offered what I’d stupidly been pinning for since leaving this room out the window. A chance to smell his skin again.

With a grunt, I tossed myself back against his body. I pressed myself to his bare chest and pushed my masked face into the crook of his neck. He could have tensed and tried shoving me away, but he didn’t. While I breathed in as much of him as I could from behind porcelain, he laid his cheek along the back of my head, not moving at all. Giving me the freedom to do what I wanted, body staying all loose and easy, just like his voice.

“Are you hurt bad?”

The question had me pausing and wondering what he meant, but the tug of the stitches in my arm with my subtle movements brought what it was to the center of my mind. He thought I was hurt like he’d been the last time. And, the lack of him moving told me he was doing what I had when I found him on his floor, testing to see if I’d trigger and attack. But there was no scent of concern about him, his _chakra_ was as at ease as he seemed to be.

But, apparently relaxed or not, a round of guilt for the fact I had probably frightened him several times, frightened him enough to give him minor heart attacks, bloomed to choke me. It tasted metallic and bitter. I’d been selfish, craving my own reassurance in disregard of him.

“I’m not hurt,” I said into his neck. “I just caught some shrapnel from… from an explosive _jutsu_.”

He was quiet a moment. “You’re not hurt?”

It was a question that was not a question all at once. More an implication. _You’re not hurt, who is?_

“My _kohai_ is in the _Konoha Byōin_ ,” I rumbled.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to apologize, just accepted it and sat there with me. Because he knew, of course. He’d been sitting in his own blood the first time we met because he knew.

Humming low in my throat, I pushed away from him and studied him with droll eyes. “Did you see the medics?”

He flushed at it and looked down with flaming cheeks, as if it were the most personal of questions. “Yes. I went to the _Iryō-nin_ the morning after you left. They were impressed with your work, said it had been done well.”

“Can I see?”

He looked up at me, flush deepening on his cheeks and making his scar stand out white over his nose. It was the expression of someone who’d never pushed his ass up against another man’s crotch and begged to be fucked. It was an innocent thing, a sweet and alluring thing. “Yes,” he assented, turning his face away and shifting to show me his side.

It’d gone to scar and smooth ridges in the four months since I’d seen it, and I was glad. No blood, no copper scent clogging my over-sensitive nose and laying thick on my tongue. Thoughtlessly, I reached out to stroke the long ripple of scar, remembering the numbness in my fingers as I applied the sutures, and he shivered under me.

“You must think I’m a coward, abandoning active duty the way I did.”

I tilted my head to see his downturned face. He was biting his lip and his eyes were wet in a way that spoke of tears. Instead of answering right away, I let my hand slide right down the scar to where it disappeared into the thin, cotton sleeping pants he wore, making him shiver again, even as I gripped his hip, wanting to do more than that. “Not everyone’s meant to be an ANBU.”

As if the words were a splash of cold water, he gasped in surprise, then smiled again, his eyes lighting. “And sometimes…” He reached out and laid his palm along the side of my mask, where my jawline rested under porcelain. “Even ANBU need to be eased.”

The personal quality of it, that touch so much like a lover would do it, left me still, my hold on his hip slackening. It gave him the leverage and opportunity to throw his arms around my neck. He didn’t say anything, didn’t _ask_ , but his breath was heavy and hot in my ear and there was a sweet bulge in his pants. My keen nose could even smell it, an infinity better scent than the one that’d drawn me to him to begin with.

I brought my hand down on that bulge and palmed it and he keened in my ear, arms tightening around my neck, constricting. “Is this what you want?” I asked, pressing harder, and his back stiffened, arching a little.

“Please!” he whined.

Invitation clear and blood rushing in my ears, I gripped both his hips and tipped him, almost threw him back into the tangled bedclothes. He went willingly, releasing my neck at the first sign of pressure, and letting me pull his legs around my waist and his backside into my lap, so his upper back and head were below me on the bed. Arms thrown up and framing his head and long, loose hair.

I palmed his erection again and he keened louder, thrusting up into my hand. “Please?” he asked, softer, cheeks dusted pink and pretty.

“Mummm…” I hummed the sound, watching him pant, open-mouthed, and squirm in the awkward position I’d put him in, wanting more sensation than I was giving him but unable to get it. Some distant part of me noted and acknowledged the quick change that had occurred, the shift from need to need that had just oscillated between us. This analytical corner of my brain denoted the _chunin_ was offering himself as a way for me to find some ease. He was giving me the most basic kind of comfort he had at his disposal, himself, and maybe I shouldn’t take that. But we’d been here before. He’d requested comfort and I’d delivered it. And now I was the one in need and he was willing and the sight of him like that, vulnerable parts in my lap, and the thought of him tight around me were making my ANBU attire too confining in the area of the crotch. All of it, the feel of him, the scent of him in the room, were drowning out the suffocating memory of Tenzō draped in my arms, bleeding and unmoving.

I looked down at the _chunin_ and knew he could feel it, the tight hardness growing between my legs, and could see he liked it. He was biting his lip and whimpering, moving up and down, not sure if he wanted to rub up into my hand or grind down unto me in the hope of inciting me. And I let that swell before my eyes, let it brush away the clench of my muscles and ache behind my eyes, where the images of Tenzō resided. Let him, this unknown, scarred boy, writhe a moment, then took my hand away, turned it, let my fingers trace what lay under the cotton of his sleeping pants, and slowly began unfastening the lacings keeping him in. His breathing dropped and hitched into short, sharp huffs, and his eyes blew wide, the brown nearly disappearing in the black interior. I liked the look of that, as my fingers made long work of getting to my prize. I like it so much, I lingered over flicking the laces aside and drawing his pants down.

He was wet and heavy when I peeled the fabric away. His cock lay dripping pre-cum on his belly and he just kept heaving those impossibly shallow breaths. The boy could have tried to reach for himself in attempt to ease what surely must be a painful hard on, but he only lay there, looking at me with that hooded, wanting expression, and let me tease him. Intoxicating. He was intoxicating and the ability to push passed thoughts of Tenzō surrounded by a flock of medical- _nin_ was a blessing. There was nothing more I could do for Tenzō than I already had, but I could do this for me, do this to keep myself from falling apart. To keep myself together.

His skin was hot when I brought my palm down on that swollen part of him I was so enjoying seeing respond to me. My touch elicited yet another keen I replied to with a humming purr. But I was beginning to have enough of play, and swiped my fingers over the head of his cock, collecting the weeping moisture there, before sliding them down and prodding them into his entrance. Using his own fluids as lube.

The new-made _chunin’s_ face went from soft pink to deep red, and he bit his lip harder, squirming on my digits, as I fucked him open. That was even prettier than his previous show and I wanted to go faster, but I remembered being rough the last time, and I wanted this to be gentler. Maybe needed it to be. Needed it for myself. Something kind and soft after so much killing and death.

When I thought he was ready, I eased my fingers out of him and maneuvered his legs from around my waist, so I could completely remove his cotton pants. From there, it was nothing to settle his legs on my shoulders, open my own clothes just enough, slick myself with more of our combined pre-cum, and nudge up against him.

“Please,” he gasped up at me, and I lay one hand along the side of his face in mirror of his gesture previously. He turned his face into my palm and I pushed into him.

It was easier than the first time, smoother. The stretch didn’t feel so forced or hurried, but he still dissolved into little, hiccupping sounds like sobs. Tears leaked out of his eyes to dampen his lashes and wet my hand, but I didn’t think it was from pain. Sensitivity and over simulation, but not pain. Those tear-prisms in his lashes, lowered over his flushed cheeks, were alluring in a way I couldn’t explain. Maybe in just how well he took me while remaining so demure and shy. There was nothing demure or shy about the position I had in in. Hands above his head and legs at my disposal, so all of him was on display while I impaled him, his muscles tensing and twitching and pulse fluttering in his throat.

“Ummm…” I hummed the sound and made a cursory movement, testing how we fit together and pulling a pathetic, “Ngh!” from him. He strained under me, looking for friction and I gave it to him, setting a steadily building pace and smoothing my thumb in circles around and round on his cheek.

The sounds of our escalating breathing mingled in the quiet, velvet-dark of his room and more tears squeezed out of his eyes. My young _chunin_ looked up at me with moist, liquid eyes full of soft something I couldn’t quite identify, something bordering on affection and I felt a swelling in my heart like warmth. An urge to feel his skin on my lips and taste the salt of his sweat on my tongue bloomed in my chest beside that warmth and I slid my hand up from his cheek to cover his eyes, surprised by what I was about to do.

The other boy under me was equally surprised. A sound like uncertainty, almost fear came out of him in place of his other, more pleasured noises and a hitch threw his movements out of sync with mine, but when he felt the press of my lips against his neck, felt the hot puff of my breath and the line of soft heat I left up his neck, he relaxed. Realizing what I’d done. Realizing I’d blinded him so I could take off my mask and run my tongue along his pulse point. His hips started their rocking again, and he tilted his head, pushing his face further into my hand and allowing me to do as I liked with his throat. A dangerous thing for a _shinobi_ , a trusting thing.

I hummed a short, shallow articulation against the bottom line of his jaw, nipped at that exposed throat lightly, then licked a swath up to his parted lips. Where I hesitated, stilling even my assault on his nether regions. The other boy whined and writhed under me and around me, protesting the lack of stimulation when we’d come so far, when I’d worked him to such a pitch, but I wanted something and I wasn’t certain I could get it. There was a difference between fucking someone and kissing them. That was why whores didn’t kiss, unless you paid them extra. They’d fuck you blue or allow you to do the same to them for a modest price, but try to kiss them and you were liable to find a blade at your throat. A blade from _Sage_ knew where when you were both naked, but a blade from somewhere.

So, I hesitated, debating before I lowered my lips and brushed them soft across his. The new _chunin_ gasped a short, little, shocked sound, then his lips were pressing up into mine, molding with them, hungrily pushing them open, his tongue tangling with mine in something like desperation. It was a jolt, but he tasted like cinnamon and sharp tang and I leaned into it, until slick saliva slipped out down our faces and it was hard to tell where we were more intimately joined, above or below.

Somehow his legs had come off my shoulders and locked around my waist, almost hooked behind my ass, and one of his heels nudged hard into my rear end. Almost _kicked_ me, in clear message I should get the show back on the road. I obliged him and resumed bucking my hips into him, adjusting myself to our new angle and pushing to hit that place that made him thrash.

It didn’t take much. Didn’t take long for either of us. A few minutes tangled up as we were and he was jerking his head away, still courteously keeping his eyes firmly behind my palm, even in this moment, but parting our lips to mew out little, sharp noises, as, untouched, he spilled seed on both his belly and my ANBU attire.

I grunted and rumbled a sound like purr mixed with a deep-throated growl. Not yet at my own peak, I reached between us and stroked him through the remainder of his release. Holding him and savoring the feel of his sticky pleasure between my fingers, slicking them and making it easy to move my hand up and down on him. The heat of him in my grip, throbbing with his frantic heartbeat, urged me down on his neck and my mouth met the curve of his shoulder. Teeth digging in with little bites that left no mark, while I milked out everything he had to give.

My continued ministrations, trailing his orgasm, pushed him to stimulation like pain and his articulations turned needy and high, thin and begging, and I went from tender nips to soft kisses on his jaw, slowing my hand motions, even as my hips stuttered and thrusts went erratic with him so tight around me. With a gasp on his ear, my cheek pressed to his, I finished, buried deep in him. Just unable to move as I came.

Somehow, in the midst of it all, he’d managed to keep his legs locked around me, and in the moment he tucked his heels into the base of my spine and used them to keep me there. To keep us both as we were, he, with his overwrought tears slipping through my fingers, and me, with my face flush with his cheek, my own tears for all I couldn’t do dribbling out of my eyes. Clumping my eyelashes, as I found myself shaking-crying.

For Tenzō, for the mission, for the blood still on my hands, in the creases of my nails, for the helplessness of it all. For the boy holding me in his arms and legs and other places like I was the only thing in the world and I was made of glass. I’d thought I was alright, thought I was just following into sex because it would keep me together, keep me distracted, but I’d been wrong. I’d _been_ in pieces since Tenzō took a hit from the exploding _jutsu_. I’d just not allowed myself to process it until I’d let everything else go.

“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay,” he kept murmuring against my ear, his fingers stroking through my hair. And I just let him hold me. Let him comfort me until he chose to break our position, until he chose to give me space to pull out and drop into the crook of his arm. He kept his eyes closed through the transition, and once it was done and my mask was back on, he held me more and continued running his fingers through my silver hair.

My own fingertips roved over the ridge of his scar, the one I’d stitched closed, and I concentrated on that; that other night, until I could gain control on myself and settle. Settle into his body and his reassurance and I could get a handle on my crying. Only then did I think to ask, “Did you bleed? The last time?”

His fingers stilled, his face painted pink, yet again, before cooling back to his singular bronze. “Yes,” he admitted, his fingers resuming their work in my damp hair. There wasn’t much hesitation in his voice. More calm softness. Desire not to make me feel shame or regret.

Yet, despite his lack of blame and quietness, his very wanting not to make me feel sorrow over the fact, I couldn’t help shifting against him, remembering blood in the air. I let others fuck me bloody after missions when my mind was flayed and my body screaming for someone to pound it into submission, but the notion I’d done the same to this _chunin_ was different on my tired mind, when he held me firm and Tenzō lay in some hospital bed.

“You didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to do. Anything I didn’t ask you to do.” The words came soft and I shifted again, burying my masked face further into his neck.

I breathed in his cooling scent and let my fingers go back to his scar, tracing it. “And you’re going to be a teacher?” This seemed a safer topic. A gentle way to move the conversation off to better things. Sweeter things.

My ploy was well rewarded. He smiled at me. A bright and happy thing on his lips. I could feel the pleasure in every line of him along my skin. This naked boy pressed against me in utter abandon. “I’m going to teach young _nin_ how to stay alive.”

I nodded, feeling sleep climbing on me a little at a time. My fingers slowing, my eyes drooping. A small hum came out of me and I stiffened my muscles to move, but his arms held me. “You can stay,” he murmured.

A small part of me wanted to fight it, to resist and _do the right thing_ , the sensible, _shinobi_ thing, but I was in his bed and my muscles were spent and I was so tired in so many ways. “I need to leave tomorrow,” I muttered back, settling into him.

“Yes,” he agreed.

I should have just slept, mind made up to this travesty of disregard for rules and regulations, but I struggled against it to say one more thing. “Can I come back sometime?” Because if I was going to sin, I might as well keep on with it. _Devote_ myself to it.

His hands whispered through my hair and his words through my ears. “Yes. Yes, I would like if you did.”

This resting like a weight in my mind, I let myself slip. Let myself fall away in the arms of a _chunin_ , let it all go with him encircling me.

In the morning, I would find Tenzō in a hospital room, I would hold my _kohai_ and know that he would be alright for myself. See it with my own eyes. I would file a careless report, fulfill responsibility… but for this moment, this night, I would sleep wrapped this nameless boy’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> This salty ball of angst and glitter is an original fiction author and fan fiction writer, who literally lives for comments and reader interaction. Even if this is nothing but inarticulate vowel screams, lol. He exist on a flotilla of social media, separated into a wide array writery things.
> 
> If you are crazy enough to want to see what I'm writing on any given day, and maybe try tempting me into writing something specific, feel free to join me in my personal writing Discord [Midway](https://discord.gg/jsQw96p), or friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066 if you would rather chat one on one.
> 
> On Facebook I can be located on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction.
> 
> On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands) I primarily run with the fan fiction crowd and I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.


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